Don’t Get Trumped – Best Websites for Catching B2B Plagiarism

Melania Trump was in hot water for accidentally plagiarizing part of her speech from Michelle Obama. Don’t let this happen to your B2B content.

Once upon a time, I taught an ethics class at a small college in the town where I live. I tried to impress upon my students that not only is cheating wrong, it’s especially disconcerting to cheat in ethics class.

Nevertheless, over the course of the term, several students plagiarized their papers. One example sticks in my memory.

A 30ish, married male student turned in a well-written essay on the ethical issues he’d experienced as a 45-year-old single mother. In other words, he hadn’t even read the essay he’d downloaded off the internet before giving it to me.

Plagiarism Happens to the Rich and Famous

This and other memories came to mind last week as prospective first lady Melania Trump delivered a speech to the Republican National Convention that bore a remarkable similarity to a speech given by the woman she hopes to succeed, Michelle Obama.

The mistake appears unintentional — a speechwriter at the Trump Organization later took responsibility — but the incident hijacked the news cycle. Plagiarism sent the wrong message about the Donald Trump presidential campaign at the worst possible time.

This is the last thing you want to have happen to your B2B content.

B2B Marketers, Prevent It Before It Happens

If you watch Melania Trump’s and Michelle Obama’s speeches side by side, the plagiarized bits could have shown up in just about any political speech. That didn’t stop the controversy.

It’s normal to look elsewhere for inspiration, and sometimes similar language will creep into your copy. But it could create serious issues if you publish material that even looks plagiarized.

Plagiarism can be hard to avoid in B2B content marketing. While ideas always cross-germinate — and this is healthy! — marketers need to keep close track of where their ideas come from. Forgetting to give proper attribution will reflect poorly on yourself and your whole organization. At best it looks lazy. At worst, it can seriously harm your company’s reputation. Neither is what you want in a highly competitive B2B space.

To help you catch accidental (or intentional) plagiarism, you can use the websites listed below.

Plagiarism-Catching Checklist

Quick Check: Google is your friend. If any copy you’ve received looks familiar — or if something just feels off — plug some text into a Google search. This is a great way to spot-check freelance writers who produce B2B content for your organization.

Digging Deeper: Paper Rater lets you check a limited amount of copy for originality. While it doesn’t show what specifically what copy may be plagiarized — you have to buy the full report for that — you can quickly see a text’s “originality rating.”

In-Depth Search: Like Paper Rater, Copyscape will check copy from your site to see if it has turned up elsewhere on the web. Its premium service, however, lets you check up to 10,000 pages on your site, track instances of plagiarism and help you manage your response to incidents.

If you find that your content seems suspiciously similar to what you find on the web, consider turning to emedia to develop and syndicate ethical, plagiarism-free content for you.